Don’t insult people for their religious choices

By Bishop Dave Chikosi

My response must have hit a raw nerve with Mr Brilliant Pongo. He is clearly miffed that I would dare challenge his brilliant thesis on the subject of church prophets. In his latest installment he sounds like a man who is not used to having his views openly challenged.

So he resorts to name calling (fraud, vain etc).

The language is very strident. But we also know that “insults are the last result of a feeble mind.” When a man cannot debate his way out of a paper bag, he usually resorts to cheap invectives. We understand that. And so we will ignore the ramblings and go on to the substantive objections and issues that he raises.

Just to clarify right off the bat: the little bit of biography at the end that Mr Pongo describes as self-promotion and is making him fulminate was not inserted by me. It wasn’t even provided by me! It was gratuitously inserted into my original article by the editor of Nehanda Radio for obvious editorial attribution reasons.

The editor did his homework and found that info on our ministry website on his own, without my assistance. So it is incorrect to imply that I am citing my educational credentials for the purpose of making Mr Pongo “quack in his boots.” If you are quacking in your boots sir, blame it on the editors of this website! LOL!

But the basic passage that Mr Pongo takes issue with me in his latest article is found in Mark 10 and to this we now turn our attention. He accuses me of focusing on the “now in this time” part of the divine promise in verse 29 and ignoring the eternal life “in the age to come” part.

Well, as a born again Christian I don’t need to focus on eternal life to come. I already have that in the bag. We who are saved possess both ticket and confirmation of our flight to glory and as soon as it arrives we are going. We are Rapture-ready.

But while we await the arrival of our flight at this airport called Earth, we need to be able to go over to Starbucks and McDonalds to get some sustenance “now in this time”. They won’t give you coffee and hamburgers just because you have a ticket for your flight.

Your ticket takes you to heaven but it does not pay for your meal “here and now”. You need the currency of faith to purchase daily necessities (and luxury items) while we wait for our flight. But faith in what? Faith in divine promises such as Mark 10:29.

The trouble with an over-emphasis on the sweet by-and-by, pie-in-the-sky aspect of the Gospel is that I am not in heaven yet. I need resources, not in the sweet “by-and-by”, but in the nasty “here-and-now”. Yes it is true that “This world is not my home, I’m just passing through.”

But what shape are you passing through? Broke? Sick? Defeated? It’s amazing to me that while Jesus prays, “Thy Kingdom come here on earth”, the church sings “I’ll fly away O glory.” Somebody obviously didn’t get the memo from heaven about these things.

Listen, what Jesus said about the “hundredfold return” is what He said. No-one asked or coerced Him to say it. I wasn’t even there when He made the promise. And so it is disingenuous to scold people for believing a promise that was freely given.

Mr Pongo wants preachers to apologize if the promise of “houses and lands” comes to pass in their lives.

We will do no such thing. God said it. I believe it. That settles it. “Haterz gonna hate” but that shouldn’t stop Gospel ministers from claiming a clear promise of prosperity given by none other than the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. As one Bishop says: “The devil is a liar, and so is his mother-in-law!”

Mr Pongo also takes issue with my use of 2 Corinthians 9:6-8 and lambasts me for making it a “dollars” passage. According to him this chapter is not about money. Really? What is it about? Has he read the context? (and he is a great one for advocating context isn’t he?). The whole chapter 9 from verse 1 to 15 is about offerings and gifts. Hello! And here is the disputed portion of the text:

Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. 7 Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work (2 Cor 9:6-8)

The “cause and effect” pattern is very clear: as you give what you have decided in your heart, “God is able to bless you abundantly.” When you give “it shall be given unto you, good measure, pressed down and shaken together” (Luke 6:38). And when you give little “you will also reap sparingly, and whosoever sows generously will also reap generously” (2 Cor 9:6).

This is the Law of Sowing and Reaping folks! Its woven into the warp and woof of our very creaturely existence. This is why Jesus, speaking of the Parable of the Sower, said to His disciples: “Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables?” (Mark 4:13). In other words, this is the mother of all parables, teaching us the mother of all Kingdom principles. Yes, sowing and reaping actually works, even if Mr Pongo doesn’t think so!

But this failure on Mr Pongo’s part to coherently pull together all the pieces of scripture in order to arrive at a sound practical theology is what caused him to botch and bungle Luke Chapter 10. In his previous article he wrongly posits that Jesus’ command to the disciples to “not take a purse or bag or sandals” on their missionary journey is a universal rule for ALL Gospel preachers in ALL places at ALL times.

Remember that? I rebutted that by showing that this could not have been a universal rule as the same instructions were later reversed in Luke 22. This was simply a careless handling of scripture and for a trained journalist this is unacceptable. And now the same carelessness continues with his failure to read the context of 2 Corinthians 9:6-8.

But what really bothers me is not the carelessness with which Mr Pongo handles Holy Writ. What really disturbs me is the smug attitude towards the tens of thousands of Christians who have made the conscious individual choice to attend the services of the prophets that he criticizes.

These tens of thousands, according to him, don’t think.

Because if their heads were really screwed on right they would have enough sense to know that these services they are attending are no good for them. If they had any brains they would stop attending (and presumably join his church?) The masses are just too gullible and too intellectually challenged to see that they are getting ripped off by these fraudsters and conmen.

Lest I be accused of exaggerating Mr Pongo’s position, I would urge readers to listen to the radio discussion which is available on this page. There Mr Pongo says, Vari kuvhara vanhu (“they are fronting the masses”). But kana ukavhara munhu, surely it means kuti avharwa wacho aziko brain, handiti?

Mr Pongo says in that same radio discussion, that the masses just follow these prophets because they are attracted to the lifestyle of wealth that the prophets flaunt in front of their congregants. They are mindlessly following religious celebrity figures the same way secular masses mindlessly followed celebrities like Michael Jackson or Elvis Pressley. Really?

I don’t care which way anyone slices it, this is simply offensive and downright unacceptable. How can you diminish the intellectual capabilities of tens of thousands of your fellow countrymen that way? How patronizing and condescending! Who are you sir, to decide who adds value to my life and who doesn’t? Are all these tens of thousands of adherent such intellectual infants that they need your guidance and wisdom in making the right religious choices, sir?

You are wrong in your infantilization of the Zimbabwean public sir.

People not only know what they want: they know what’s good for them and they know who adds value to their lives. If the 80-100 000 people who attend these services were not getting any help or value, they would have stopped going long ago. Trust me on that one.

And last time I checked, no-one is holding a gun to anybody’s head and forcing people to attend.

Everyone is acting out of their own free will. But for you sir there is no freewill at play here. The issue is simple: vanhu veZimbabwe havana kukwana, that’s why they throng these meetings. Kwanai! This is the message we are getting from my friend Brilliant. Unbelievable!

Let me close with this: Mr Pongo wants to make an issue of how I became Bishop, who ordained me etc etc.

Here is what I can tell you: No, I did not go to Rome to be consecrated by the Pope nor did I go to England to be knighted by the Archbishop of Canterbury. I have nothing against those who go there to be ordained into ministry. But I have a problem with people who think that you have to go outside your home country or your local group of churches to get ministry credentials.

Has Mr Pongo never heard of AICs (African Initiated Churches)?

If not where has he been? These are churches started in Africa by Africans and not by missionaries from another continent. We are not beholden to Europe theologically or financially. And we don’t have to conform to established denominational standards and procedure, as if these were received on a scroll that fell from heaven.

No, you can’t judge or measure our ecclesiology by your denomination’s ecclesiology.

Our bishop’s don’t have to come into office the same way as yours do. We are committed to the same Biblical mandates as your denomination is but we don’t owe your denomination an explanation of why we exist. We are different. We are independent. And we like it that way. The notion that if a church has no ties with Rome or England then it’s not legit is a vestige of a colonial mindset that we roundly reject.

Beware of a religious fascism that demands that everybody toe the line and follow its own theological and ecclesiological dictates. That too we reject. The disciples exhibited some of this fascism at one time in the Book of Mark. Interestingly it happened after they had just failed to cast out a demon out of a boy with epilepsy.

Shortly after their failure they see a man successfully doing the very thing they had just failed to do. You know they are going to get petty and jealous. And true to form, they rush to report this serious breach of Kingdom modus operandi and abuse of God’s power by this rogue, lone ranger fellow who doesn’t belong to our denomination. John the disciple leads the pack:

“Teacher,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us” (Mark 9:38)

Notice, the fascism: “and we told him to stop.” Wow!

But Jesus’ response was not what they were expecting at all. He wasn’t putting up with any of their sectarian nonsense. He lets them know that there is no place for spiritual tribalism or provincialism in the Kingdom.

“Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “For no one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, for whoever is not against us is for us (Mark 9:39-40).

Translation into the vernacular? “What that man is doing is none of your business . Leave him alone!” There’s a word for you right there sir!

Dave Chikosi is founder, Bishop and senior Pastor of Grace Christian Fellowship International Churches. After establishing three growing congregations in Zimbabwe, Africa, he came to USA to study for a Master’s degree in Theology. Upon completion, he moved to Michigan where he planted the church in the City of Ypsilanti.